The European Hydrogen Association (EHA) and the European Regions and Municipalities Partnership for hydrogen and fuel cells (HyRaMP) have called for accelerated support from the EU, national and local governments to ensure a sustainable build-up of hydrogen infrastructure in Europe. Both organizations stress the need to integrate hydrogen infrastructure development into the EU’s current energy and transport infrastructure plans.

The Metropolitan building (235 Dong Khoi, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City), with the main function of an office for rent, was built in May 1996. Since 2004, seeing the importance of saving electricity in terms of economy as well as environment, the Directorate of the building has invested in renovating energy using equipment to save costs and meet development demand. With investment solutions, the annual power consumption of the building has been reduced by about 11.9%.

Regular innovation to improve productivity and product quality is the target that leaders of the company has always aimed at. With that target, in November 1998, the company invested in the mechanized blast furnace cement production line of China with the design capacity of 60,000 tons per year. In 2002, the company invested in an additional synchronous production line, increasing the total design capacity of the two lines to 120,000 tons per year. Currently, each year, the plant manufactures and supplies more than 300,000 tons of cement to the main markets in Hanoi and surrounding areas.

Making a cellphone battery last ten times longer is a first target for a large research project that IBM, Infineon and a number of European universities unveiled on Wednesday. The new research project, called Steeper, also aims to decrease the energy needs of other electronic devices like TV sets or supercomputers by 10 times when active, and to virtually eliminate power consumption when they are in standby mode.

A new clean tech company called Totempower Energy Systems Ltd. has come up with an easy way to put wind power within the grasp of everyday homeowners. The company is developing new micro-wind turbines that are designed for close quarters and non-disruptive installation, but the real key to getting more micro-wind turbines into consumers’ hands is the company’s “ease of ownership” plan which provides a soup-to-nuts service including site selection and connecting the turbine to the home electrical system.

Solar panels are usually mounted in series, to sum up their voltages, and the resulting power is sent to a large inverter, which transforms the DC voltage into AC. One big issue with this scheme is that if shade falls on one panel, or it gets dirty, the inverter lowers the current of all the other panels, and causing power losses through inefficiency.

The People’s Committee of Ninh Thuan Province recently presented a master plan for socioeconomic development to 2020 with a vision towards 2030, with an ambition to turn Ninh Thuan into an energy center of the whole country and to list its name among the 20 rich provinces of Vietnam.

The Centre for Bio-technology Research and Application complex now under construction in southern Dong Nai Province is expected to be one of the leading centres of its kind in Southeast Asia, according to Nguyen Quan, deputy minister of Science and Technology. Expected to be completed within the decade, the 227-ha complex is being built in Xuan Duong Commune in Cam My District.

VietnamPlus and Siemens signed a partnership agreement in Hanoi on Oct. 21 whereby VietnamPlus will be the media sponsor for Siemens Green Technology Journalism Award 2010. This award is created for the first time in ASEAN in order to acknowledge and reward journalists for excellent reporting on energy efficiency, industrial productivity and sustainability issues. It is open to print and online media from Indonesia , Malaysia , the Philippines , Singapore , Thailand and Vietnam.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has instructed the Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) to promote its activities that it has undertaken to ensure power plants have an adequate amount of coal to run their facilities. Vinacomin should set up a team to work with the steering committee on importing coal for the thermoelectric projects, draft plans for importing coal and should monitor transport networks, said Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Le Duong Quang.

The Coca-Cola company has been introducing more electric vehicles and other low-emissions trucks into its massive fleet, and now researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University are developing yet another alternative energy option. The team has been working on a solar powered air conditioning system that would significantly reduce or eliminate beverage delivery truck emissions related to cooling.

The Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (ADDC), which supplies electricity to the city and surrounding areas, will have installed digital electricity meters in all buildings by the end of this year, its deputy managing director Abdulrahman al Dhaheri said yesterday. The new meters not only calculate power usage, but also allow consumers to sell their own solar-generated electricity back to the grid.

The United States is on the verge of a solar boom that could provide 4.3 percent of the nation's electricity by 2020, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. There's just a 12-figure catch: Investors need to put $100 billion into the solar industry to keep the generation of solar electricity growing by 42 percent a year for the next decade to expand capacity from the current 1.4 gigawatts to 44 gigawatts.

Only to the visually-impaired it may look like fuel cells and electric cars don’t enjoy success nowadays. Daimler AG has just started a pilot program of leasing Mercedes-Benz hydrogen fuel cell cars to 5 to 15 users in the US, to see how their car acts in real life conditions and how people receive them. To me this looks like a postpone of the real thing, just like GM did to EV1.

This is the third day in a row that we are presenting the most efficient lighting systems invented recently. Now, it’s time for another invention from GE, who made a 1,500-lumen LED light bulb and cooled it through a technology used in aviation.

While Compact Fluorescent Bulbs have barely been seen in various parts of the world and incandescent lighting still rules in others, two Japanese companies already want to change them for LEDs – straight tube LED lamps, which, they say, are much more economical.

Weighing under 454 kilos (1,000 lbs), the Honda Air is run by a compressed air motor, with the energy held inside compressed air in pressurized tanks. It’s “programmed” to have an autonomy of around 100 miles and has a pneumatic regulator system.

Siemens has landed an order to supply 80 wind turbines for the Dan Tysk wind farm off Germany's North Sea coast. With a total capacity of 288 MW, the farm will begin supplying clean electricity to 500,000 German households in 2014. Dan Tysk Offshore Wind GmbH is owned by Vattenfall Europe with a 51 percent stake and Stadtwerke Munchen with a 49 percent stake.

A few days ago, the Israel-based energy company ZenithSolar has officially unveiled its 3rd generation Solar Z20. Being installed in Kibbutz Yavne in central Israel, the solar energy generator is a combined heat and power system, able to deliver 72% efficiency.

The first factory to manufacture the Nissan Leaf, in Oppama, Japan, started producing functional units on October 22. The first shipments will be made to Japan and the US this November and to Europe starting December. The Nissan Leaf uses lithium-ion batteries made by Automotive Energy Supply Corp, the joint venture between NEC and Nissan.